The present invention relates generally to the field of pipe fabrication and more specifically to a system and method for designing and fabricating piping and structural components.
Conventional systems for fabricating piping and structural components are well known. Piping and structural components are important not only as structural members but in other areas where solids, liquids and gases have to be transferred from one point to the other. A user wishing to fabricate piping components begins by preparing drawings of the piping network having the piping components. The network is designed using a computer aided design/computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) system.
A CAD/CAM system well known in the art as AutoCAD is a software-based tool that assists users in visualizing, selecting components or materials and developing a set of drawings from which a product can be manufactured. For a piping network, the drawings typically include the layout of the pipes, dimensions, specifications, interconnections and intersections between the pipes. Once the drawings are completed, the piping network as designed must be fabricated on the fabricating unit. Herein lies some of the problems of the related art.
A skilled artisan must manually transfer information associated with each section and pieces of the piping network from the drawing to the fabricating unit. Each section including dimensions, the interconnections and the like must be painstakingly and manually entered into the fabrication unit. It is only after transferring the dimensions to the fabrication unit that the piping network and the patterns contained therein may be fabricated since the CAD/CAM system has no idea which patterns to form. Not only is manual transfer of the pattern data laborious, it can lead to costly errors. If the dimensions of a pipe are erroneously entered, the pipes will be incorrectly fabricated. Given the fact that pipes are relatively expensive, incorrect piping fabrication will certainly increase fabrication costs.
A conventional system for transferring data from a CAD/CAM system to a fabrication unit for duct work fabrication is known. Duct work fabrication is unique in that it employs a xe2x80x9cone piece at a time custom pattern developmentxe2x80x9d and manually controlled cutting of the development patterns. However, the attributes of piping fabrication make the aforementioned duct work system inapplicable to piping fabrication. An example of one attribute relates to a concept known as spooling. In pipe fabrication, spooling refers to fabricating and assembling sections of a piping network prior to arrival at the field. Multiple spools can be fabricated and assembled at a time. This saves time and labor since these spools do not need to be fabricated and assembled in the field. In conventional systems for transferring duct fabrication data, there is no design of spooling patterns, no transfer of spooling information and no fabrication and assembly based on such information.
Therefore, a need exists to solve the aforementioned problems and the present invention meets this need.
The present invention provides an automated solution for users such as pipe fabricators and mechanical contractors. The system automatically retrieves cutting information for fabricating components of a piping network. The system cuts holes, fish mouths for O-lets, saddles and laterals; bevel ends in pieces of a pipe; and cuts the pattern to attach a lateral to the hole cut in the pipe. Alternatively, all of the cutting information may be manually entered. According to a first aspect of the present invention, a method for designing and fabricating piping and structural components for a piping network is disclosed. A CAD (computer assisted design) system is initially employed to generate one or more pipe drawings and associated data for the piping network after which the information is stored in a memory of the CAD system.
Thereafter, the pipe drawings and associated data information are selected and then automatically retrieved by a second computer for a fabrication unit. Based upon the pipe drawings and associated data, the fabrication unit selects one or more pieces of piping and other raw materials needed for the fabrication; and thereafter fabricates the piping and structural components for the selected items.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a computing user interface for transferring piping fabrication information to a fabrication unit is taught. Among other components, the user interface includes (1) one or more software instructions for accepting user selection of one or more pipe drawing files, the pipe drawing files being generated by a computer aided design software; (2) one or more software instructions for displaying one or more spool files associated with the pipe drawing files; (3) one or more software instructions for accepting user selection of one or more of the spool files; and (4) one or more software instructions for retrieving the spool files selected into the fabrication unit for fabrication.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a system for designing and fabricating piping and structural components is taught. The system includes a design computing device for preparing drawings and associated data for the piping and structural components. It should be observed that the drawings may be stored in memory of the design computing device. Further, a fabrication unit which includes both a fabrication computing device and a cutter comprises part of the system. In response to a request from the fabrication computing device, the design computing device automatically forwards the drawings and associated data to the fabrication computing device. The fabrication unit is such that upon receiving the drawings, raw materials are loaded onto the fabrication unit. Thereafter, the cutter fabricates the raw materials received in accordance with the drawings and associated data.
Advantageously, unlike a conventional system, the bevel cuts of the present invention are clean and accurate requiring little or no grinding. This increases consistency and avoids the need for re-fabrication. Furthermore, the CAD specifies the end treatments determining how the ends are trimmed (i.e. the bevel angle) and the 3-D spatial information determine the hole pattern and the end pattern for the intersecting pipe.